Alcohol and sexist attitudes combine to increase male violence towards women

SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF ADDICTION

Researc News

 

Researchers have long known that problem drinking increases a man's likelihood of being violent towards his wife or girlfriend, but a new study published today by the scientific journal Addiction suggests that this relationship between drinking and violence is also affected by the man's attitude toward women's equality; that is, toxic masculinity also plays a role. In a study of men in low and middle income countries, heavy drinking males were more likely to commit violence against their wives and girlfriends (intimate partner violence, or IPV) if they held sexist rather than egalitarian attitudes about women.

Male violence against women is a global problem. But the interaction of heavy drinking, sexism, and male violence is particularly important to understand in low and middle income countries (LMIC), where male harmful heavy drinking, inequitable attitudes toward women, and IPV rates are all higher than in high-income countries.

This study used data from 9,148 male married or ever-partnered (with women) respondents aged 18-49 years from seven Asian-Pacific LMIC: Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka and Timor Leste. Respondents who reported having 6+ drinks in one session at least monthly were defined as regular heavy episodic drinkers. Gender attitudes were scored using the Gender-Equitable Men (GEM) scale, which measures attitudes toward gender norms related to sexual and reproductive health, sexual relations, violence, domestic work and homophobia.

Overall, 13% of the men interviewed reported committing physical or sexual IPV in the previous 12 months. As expected, both binge drinking and lower gender-equitable attitudes independently increased IPV. The pooled odds ratio of men reporting IPV was 3.42 times greater for regular heavy episodic drinkers than for abstainers, and every point decrease in gender equitability attitude on the GEM scale was associated with 7% increased odds of IPV.

When their effects were combined, regular heavy episodic drinking and lower gender-equitable attitudes were together associated with IPV over and above the relationship of the two factors separately.

Lead author Dr. Anne-Marie Laslett explains: "This interaction suggests that traditional gender norms, which we already know increase the risk of IPV victimisation, may be particularly dangerous when combined with binge drinking. To address the problem of intimate partner violence everywhere, but especially in low and middle income countries, we will need to tackle both entrenched inequitable attitudes toward women and risky alcohol consumption."

###

For editors:

Peer reviewed: Yes
Type of study: Secondary analysis of a longitudinal study
Subject of study: People
Funding: Intergovernmental organization

This paper is free to download for one month from the Wiley Online Library: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.15485 or by contacting Jean O'Reilly, Editorial Manager, Addiction, jean@addictionjournal.org

Funding: Partners for Prevention: a UNDP, UNFPA, UN Women and UNV regional joint programme for the prevention of violence against women and girls in Asia and the Pacific and the Australian Research Council.

Full citation for article: Laslett A-M, Graham K, Wilson IM, Kuntsche S, Fulu E, Jewkes R, and Taft A (2021) Does drinking modify the relationship between men's gender-inequitable attitudes and their perpetration of intimate partner violence? A meta-analysis of surveys of men from seven countries in the Asia Pacific region. Addiction 116: doi: 10.1111/add.15485

Addiction is a monthly international scientific journal publishing peer-reviewed research reports on alcohol, substances, tobacco, and gambling as well as editorials and other debate pieces. Owned by the Society for the Study of Addiction, it has been in continuous publication since 1884.

SHOULD 14 YEAR OLDS DRINK BOOZE IF SO CAN THEY VOTE TOO

Study shows both parents and peers play a role in greater alcohol use among adolescents who experience early puberty

SOCIETY FOR RESEARCH IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Research News

 

Research shows that children who experience puberty earlier than their peers are more likely to begin drinking alcohol at a young age and early alcohol exposure is also known to be related to alcohol dependence later in life. Specifically, adolescents who mature early are two to three times more likely to drink than other youth. In addition, early maturing girls are two to three times more likely to drink until intoxication and three times as likely to have an alcohol use disorder. A new study examined why early developing 14-year-old adolescents are more likely to drink alcohol compared to those whose pubertal development is on-time or late. The findings show these adolescents are more likely to have peers who drink alcohol and are also given greater permission to drink by their parents.

The findings were published in a Child Development article, written by researchers at The Pennsylvania State University.

"Peer drinking and parent permissiveness explained a substantial percentage of the links between early puberty and alcohol use," said Rebecca Bucci, doctoral candidate in the department of sociology and criminology at The Pennsylvania State University. "This is important because early alcohol exposure is known to be related to alcohol dependence later in life."

The study included intergenerational, nationally representative data from over 11,000 adolescents (5,799 girls and 5,757 boys) in the United Kingdom followed since infancy in the ongoing Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). The current study relied on data collected when the children were aged 9 months, 7, 11, and 14 years. At age 14, adolescents self-reported information about the following:

• Alcohol use: Whether they had ever (in their lifetime) had a drink of alcohol. If yes, they were asked: frequency (3+ times in the prior year denoted frequent drinking given the seriousness of alcohol at age 14) and if they binge drank (consumed 5 or more alcoholic drinks at a time).
• Perceived Pubertal Timing: Girls and boys both reported on personal growth spurts, skin changes, and body hair for boys and girls. Gender-specific questions queried breast development and menstruation for girls and voice changes and facial hair for boys.
• Friend Risk Behavior: To assess risk factors from their peers, adolescents were asked about their friends' drinking behavior, other-sex friends, and dating from age 11 to 14.

To help assess other childhood risk factors that could contribute to alcohol use, parents and children self-reported information about the following:

• Parental Behavior between the ages of 11 to 14 years: Permissiveness about alcohol use, parental drinking frequency, lack of parental knowledge (how often the parent knew where the child was going, what they were doing, and who they were with), child-parent distance (how close adolescents were to both their mother and father), and unsupervised time.
• Childhood at 9 months and 7 years: Low birth weight was reported on by parents when the children were age 9 months. In addition, parental education and occupational status, single parent household, biological father absence, parental psychological distress, and childhood externalizing, and internalizing behavior problems were measured at age 7.

The findings showed that at age 14, boys and girls who had experienced early puberty were more likely to have consumed alcohol in their lifetime, to drink frequently and to binge drink. They were also more likely to have peers who drank alcohol and parents who permitted them to drink. Later puberty was protective against drinking at age 14. The data showed that only 11% of parents allowed late developing adolescents to drink but 17% of parents of early puberty boys and 22% of parents of early puberty girls allowed them to drink at age 14.

"Children who experience early puberty are no more mature with respect to social or cognitive development than those who experience puberty later, and the potential harms of alcohol are greater at younger ages," said Jeremy Staff, professor of sociology and criminology at The Pennsylvania State University. "Parents deserve support to continue age-appropriate monitoring throughout adolescence. Looking more like an adult does not mean a teen can drink safely. Being more permissive about alcohol use does not prevent future problems."

Additionally, the authors suggest that schools and communities should invest in evidence-based universal prevention efforts regarding alcohol use and medical providers and should follow American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines to begin universal screening for alcohol exposure at age 11. Providers can support parents in aiming for alcohol-free childhoods.

Researchers note that the context of the analysis is based in the UK which differs from alcohol and pubertal timing studies conducted in the United States (UK alcohol use among teens is high - around 70% of 16-year-olds reported alcohol consumption in 2007). The authors also acknowledge that other unobserved factors may contribute to the association between early pubertal timing and adolescent drinking including hormonal changes and structural and functional changes to the brain. Future research should parse out further nuances regarding parental alcohol permissiveness, such as whether parents supplied alcohol for parties or only allowed the child to drink in their presence. Future studies could also be strengthened by using clinician (rather than self-report) of pubertal timing and peer reports of their own alcohol use (rather than peer use as perceived by the child who is the focus of the study).

###

This work is supported by the Economic and Social Research Council UK (ESRC) and the United States National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Summarized from Child Development, Pubertal Timing and Adolescent Alcohol Use: The Mediating Role of Parental and Peer Influences by Bucci, R., Staff, J., Maggs, J., and Dorn, L. (The Pennsylvania State University). Copyright 2021 The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved.

Parents more lenient about alcohol with teens who experience puberty early

PENN STATE

Research News

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Parents of teens who went through puberty early may be more lenient when it comes to letting them consume alcohol, according to a new Penn State study. But the researchers said that even if adolescents appear more mature, drinking alcohol is still not safe for them.

Rebecca Bucci, a PhD candidate in criminology at Penn State, said the study -- published today (April 28) in Child Development -- aimed to discover why adolescents who go through puberty early are more likely than their peers to drink alcohol.

"A surprising proportion of parents in our study allowed their early-developing children to drink alcohol at the age of 14 -- in fact, one in seven," Bucci said. "It is important to remember that early puberty does not mean the child is more advanced in cognitive or brain development. They are not older in years or more socially mature. So allowing them freedoms common for young adults is risky."

According to the researchers, previous studies have found that adolescents who go through puberty early compared to their peers are at a greater risk for problem behaviors, including being two to three times as likely to drink alcohol.

While prior studies often didn't delve into why these heightened risks exist, the researchers said there are theories. For example, adolescents who develop earlier than their peers may have weaker relationships with their parents or have less parental supervision.

To this point, Bucci said there are conflicting theories about how to parent adolescents who are more physically mature than their peers.

"Parents want to do what is best for their children, and some may wonder whether a child who starts looking older should begin to have some adult freedoms," said Jennifer Maggs, professor of human development and family studies. "Ultimately, we wanted to understand why adolescents who experience puberty at younger ages drink more than others, including factors involving the parents."

The researchers used data from more than 11,000 adolescents in the Millennium Cohort Study -- a nationally representative sample of children in the United Kingdom. Data was collected at various checkpoints throughout the children's lives, including information on whether they'd ever drank alcohol, how often they drank and whether they had ever drank five or more drinks on one day.

They also gathered information about whether the parents permitted alcohol use, as well as the adolescents' "perceived pubertal timing."

"In our study, the measure of pubertal timing is based on adolescents' reports of their own pubertal changes," said Lorah Dorn, professor of nursing. "Adolescents were asked a series of questions about their physical development and we averaged these scores for each person and compared them to the scores of same-sex adolescents who were very close to them in age."

The researchers then grouped participants into three perceived pubertal timing groups -- early, on-time and late.

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that adolescents who experienced early puberty were more likely to drink at age 14 than their on-time peers. 

Girls who went through puberty early were 29% more likely to have ever drank and 55% more likely to frequently drink. Among boys, the results were 22% and 61% more likely, respectively. Boys who developed early were also 78% more likely to have binge drank compared to boys who went through puberty on time.

Additionally, the researchers found that adolescents who experienced earlier puberty were more likely to be allowed to drink by their parents.

Specifically, while 15 percent of parents overall allowed their adolescents to drink alcohol at age 14, this was largely driven by parents of adolescents who went through puberty early -- 20 percent of those parents allowed their children to drink. Teens who developed early were also more likely to have friends who drank and more likely to be allowed to hang out with peers without adult supervision.

According to the researchers, these factors partially explained why adolescents with early puberty had higher rates of drinking.

Bucci said the results suggest that parents can have a hand in helping their teens avoid early drinking.

"This further instills the idea that parents should consider not allowing their child to drink alcohol, even if they appear more physically mature," said Jeremy Staff, professor of sociology, criminology, and demography. "Even if their child starts to look like a teenager or adult at a young age, parents should maintain the level of support and structure that matches their child's actual age and developmental maturity level."

###

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the Economic and Social Research Council UK helped support this research.

Research delves into link between test anxiety and poor sleep

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

Research News

LAWRENCE -- College students across the country struggle with a vicious cycle: Test anxiety triggers poor sleep, which in turn reduces performance on the tests that caused the anxiety in the first place.

New research from the University of Kansas just published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine is shedding light on this biopsychosocial process that can lead to poor grades, withdrawal from classes and even students who drop out. Indeed, about 40% of freshman don't return to their universities for a second year in the United States.

"We were interested in finding out what predicted students' performance in statistics classes -- stats classes are usually the most dreaded undergrad class," said lead author Nancy Hamilton, professor of psychology at KU. "It can be a particular problem that can be a sticking point for a lot of students. I'm interested in sleep, and sleep and anxiety are related. So, we wanted to find out what the relationship was between sleep, anxiety and test performance to find the correlation and how it unfolds over time."

Hamilton and graduate student co-authors Ronald Freche and Ian Carroll and undergraduates Yichi Zhang and Gabriella Zeller surveyed the sleep quality, anxiety levels and test scores for 167 students enrolled in a statistics class at KU. Participants completed an electronic battery of measures and filled out Sleep Mood Study Diaries during the mornings in the days before a statistics exam. Instructors confirmed exam scores. The study showed "sleep and anxiety feed one another" and can hurt academic performance predictably.

"We looked at test anxiety to determine whether that did predict who passed, and it was a predictor," Hamilton said. "It was a predictor even after controlling for students' past performance and increased the likelihood of students failing in class. When you look at students who are especially anxious, it was almost a five-point difference in their score over students who had average levels of anxiety. This is not small potatoes. It's the difference between a C-minus abd a D. It's the difference between a B-plus and an A-minus. It's real."

Beyond falling grades, a student's overall health could suffer when test anxiety and poor sleep reinforce each other.

"Studies have shown students tend to cope with anxiety through health behaviors," Hamilton said. "Students may use more caffeine to combat sleep problems associated with anxiety, and caffeine can actually enhance sleep problems, specifically if you're using caffeine in the afternoon or in the evening. Students sometimes self-medicate for anxiety by using alcohol or other sedating drugs. Those are things that we know are related."

Hamilton said universities could do more to communicate to students the prevalence of test anxiety and provide them with resources.

"What would be really helpful for a university to do is to talk about testing anxiety and to talk about the fact that it's very common and that there are things that can be done for students who have test anxiety," she said. "A university can also talk to instructors about doing things that they can do to help minimize the effect of testing anxiety."

According to Hamilton, instructors are hindered by the phenomenon as well: Anxiety and associated sleep problems actually distort instructors' ability to measure student knowledge in a given subject.

"As an instructor, my goal when I'm writing a test is to assess how much a student understands," she said. "So having a psychological or an emotional problem gets in the way of that. It actually impedes my ability to effectively assess learning. It's noise. It's unrelated to what they understand and what they know. So, I think it behooves all of us to see if we can figure out ways to help students minimize the effects of anxiety on their performance."

The KU researcher said testing itself isn't the problem and suggested an increase in regular tests might reduce anxiety through regular exposure. However, she said a few small changes to how tests are administered also could calm student anxiety.

"In classes that use performance-based measures like math or statistics, classes that tend to really induce a lot of anxiety for some students, encouraging those students to take five minutes right before an exam to physically write about what they're anxious about can help -- that's cheap, that's easy," Hamilton said. "Also, eliminating a time limit on a test can help. There's just really nothing to be gained by telling students, 'You have an hour to complete a test and what you don't get done you just don't get done.' That's really not assessing what a student can do -- it's only assessing what a student can do quickly."

Hamilton said going forward she'd like research into the link between test anxiety and poor sleep broadened to include a more diverse group of students and also to include its influence on remote learning.

"The students in this study were mostly middle-class, Caucasian students," she said. "So, I hesitate to say these results would generalize necessarily to universities that have a more heterogeneous student body. I also would hesitate to say how this would generalize into our current Zoom environment. I don't know how that shakes out because the demands of doing exams online are likely to be very different."

###

 

Research gives trees an edge in landfill clean-up

USDA FOREST SERVICE - NORTHERN RESEARCH STATION

Research News

 

IMAGE: A RESEARCH TEAM FROM THE USDA FOREST SERVICE AND THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI HAS DEVELOPED A NEW CONTAMINANT PRIORITIZATION TOOL THAT HAS THE POTENTIAL TO INCREASE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ENVIRONMENTAL... view more 

CREDIT: PAUL MANLEY, MISSOURI UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY; USED WITH PERMISSION

Rhinelander, Wis., April 28, 2021-- A research team from the USDA Forest Service and the University of Missouri has developed a new contaminant prioritization tool that has the potential to increase the effectiveness of environmental approaches to landfill clean-up.

Phytoremediation - an environmental approach in which trees and other plants are used to control leachate and treat polluted water and soil - hinges on matching the capability of different tree species with the types of contaminants present in soil and water. Identifying the worst contaminants within the dynamic conditions of a landfill has been challenging.

"Thousands of contaminants can be present in landfill leachate, and contamination can vary by location and over time, so it can be difficult to determine what needs to be, or even can be targeted with environmental remediation," said Elizabeth Rogers, a USDA Forest Service Pathways intern and the lead author of the study. "This tool allows site managers to prioritize the most hazardous contaminants or customize the tool to address local concerns."

Rogers and co-authors Ron Zalesny, Jr., a supervisory research plant geneticist with the Northern Research Station, and Chung-Ho Lin, a Research Associate Professor at the University of Missouri's Center for Agroforestry, combined multiple sources of data to develop a pollutant prioritization tool that systematically prioritizes contaminants according to reported toxicity values. The study, "A systematic approach for prioritizing landfill pollutants based on toxicity: Applications and opportunities," is available through the Northern Research Station at: https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/62410

Knowing which contaminants are the most hazardous allows scientists like Zalesny to better match trees and tree placement in landfills. "Phytoremediation research has focused on discovering which trees work best in particular soils and sites," Zalesny said. "The ability to home in on specific contaminants will enhance phytoremediation outcomes."

The pollutant prioritization tool allows for greater transparency on the benefits of phytoremediation. "When you know what you are targeting, you can provide better information to your community on how long remediation will take and how effective it is," Lin said.

###

Business school research is broken - here's how to fix it

News from the Journal of Marketing

AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

Research News

 

Researchers from Erasmus School of Economics, IESE Business School, and New York University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines what business schools do wrong when conducting academic research and what changes they can make so that research contributes to improving society.

The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Faculty Research Incentives and Business School Health: A New Perspective from and for Marketing" and is authored by Stefan Stremersch, Russell Winer, and Nuno Camacho.

In February 2020, an article in the Financial Times stated that business schools' research model is "ill," with faculty increasingly focusing on "abstract, abstruse and overly academic topics with little resonance beyond the higher education sector."

The researchers demonstrate that business schools use the wrong research metrics and incentives with research faculty. As Stremersch explains, "We show that business schools focus excessively on the quantity of research and insufficiently on other critical aspects such as the quality, rigor, relevance, and creativity of such research." To gauge whether research incentives in business schools are indeed badly designed, they surveyed 234 marketing professors in business schools across 20 countries and completed 22 interviews with 14 (associate) deans and eight external institution stakeholders.

Results show that business schools' research incentives are badly designed for three main reasons. First, business schools use the wrong research metrics to monitor their faculty's research, often harming the quality (rigor and relevance) of the research produced by their research faculty. Second, research with lower-than-desired practical importance may hurt teaching quality, which negatively impacts business school health. Third, while research faculty feel undercompensated for the research they do, (associate) deans feel that the current compensation levels for faculty are not sustainable.

The researchers assert that business schools need to recalibrate their faculty research incentives. To do so, business schools can start with three concrete actions. First, business schools need to develop better research metrics. "Schools need to reduce the weight they place in low-effort metrics (such as the mere number of publications or citations) and increase the weight they place in effortful metrics such as awards, research creativity, literacy, and relevance to non-academic audiences," says Winer.

Second, business schools need to develop a high commitment working environment where research faculty internalize and actively contribute to the health of the business school. Such high commitment environments should improve alignment between schools and their research faculty in terms of compensation.

Third, business schools need to improve the practical importance of their faculty's research. Several (associate) deans at top business schools whom the researchers interviewed report that the business schools they lead have made more progress on rigor than on practical importance and that they are concerned about a further decline in such practical importance in recent years.

In sum, business schools need to revise their faculty research incentives to ensure their faculty produce research that lives up to society's expectations and improves managers and firms' decision making.

###

Full article and author contact information available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/00222429211001050

Driving behaviors harbor early signals of dementia

Researchers develop highly accurate algorithms for early detection of mild cognitive impairment and dementia using naturalistic driving data

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'S MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Research News

April 28, 2021 -- Using naturalistic driving data and machine learning techniques, researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed highly accurate algorithms for detecting mild cognitive impairment and dementia in older drivers. Naturalistic driving data refer to data captured through in-vehicle recording devices or other technologies in the real-world setting. These data could be processed to measure driving exposure, space and performance in great detail. The findings are published in the journal Geriatrics.

The researchers developed random forests models, a statistical technique widely used in AI for classifying disease status, that performed exceptionally well. "Based on variables derived from the naturalistic driving data and basic demographic characteristics, such as age, sex, race/ethnicity and education level, we could predict mild cognitive impairment and dementia with 88 percent accuracy, "said Sharon Di, associate professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics at Columbia Engineering and the study's lead author.

The investigators constructed 29 variables using the naturalistic driving data captured by in-vehicle recording devices from 2977 participants of the Longitudinal Research on Aging Drivers (LongROAD) project, a multisite cohort study sponsored by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. At the time of enrollment, the participants were active drivers aged 65-79 years and had no significant cognitive impairment and degenerative medical conditions. Data used in this study spanned the time period from August 2015 through March 2019.

Among the 2977 participants whose cars were instrumented with the in-vehicle recording devices, 33 were newly diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment and 31 with dementia by April 2019. The researchers trained a series of machine learning models for detecting mild cognitive impairment/dementia and found that the model based on driving variables and demographic characteristics was 88 percent accurate, much better than models based on demographic characteristics only (29 percent) and driving variables only (66 percent). Further analysis revealed that age was most predictive of mild cognitive impairment and dementia, followed by the percentage of trips traveled within 15 miles of home, race/ethnicity, minutes per trip chain (i.e., length of trips starting and ending at home), minutes per trip, and number of hard braking events with deceleration rates ≥ 0.35 g.

"Driving is a complex task involving dynamic cognitive processes and requiring essential cognitive functions and perceptual motor skills. Our study indicates that naturalistic driving behaviors can be used as comprehensive and reliable markers for mild cognitive impairment and dementia," said Guohua Li, MD, DrPH, professor of epidemiology and anesthesiology at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and senior author. "If validated, the algorithms developed in this study could provide a novel, unobtrusive screening tool for early detection and management of mild cognitive impairment and dementia in older drivers."

###

Co-authors are Carolyn DiGuiseppi, Colorado School of Public Health; David W. Eby and Lisa Molnar, University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute; Linda Hill, University of California San Diego School of Public Health; Thelma J. Mielenz, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health; David Strogatz, Bassett Research Institute; Howard Andrews, Terry Goldberg, Barbara Lang, and Minjae Kim, Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

The study was supported by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

Founded in 1922, the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health pursues an agenda of research, education, and service to address the critical and complex public health issues affecting New Yorkers, the nation and the world. The Columbia Mailman School is the seventh largest recipient of NIH grants among schools of public health. Its nearly 300 multi-disciplinary faculty members work in more than 100 countries around the world, addressing such issues as preventing infectious and chronic diseases, environmental health, maternal and child health, health policy, climate change and health, and public health preparedness. It is a leader in public health education with more than 1,300 graduate students from 55 nations pursuing a variety of master's and doctoral degree programs. The Columbia Mailman School is also home to numerous world-renowned research centers, including ICAP and the Center for Infection and Immunity. For more information, please visit http://www.mailman.columbia.edu.

Columbia Engineering, based in New York City, is one of the top engineering schools in the U.S. and one of the oldest in the nation. Also known as The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School expands knowledge and advances technology through the pioneering research of its more than 220 faculty, while educating undergraduate and graduate students in a collaborative environment to become leaders informed by a firm foundation in engineering. The School's faculty are at the center of the University's cross-disciplinary research, contributing to the Data Science Institute, Earth Institute, Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Precision Medicine Initiative, and the Columbia Nano Initiative. Guided by its strategic vision, "Columbia Engineering for Humanity," the School aims to translate ideas into innovations that foster a sustainable, healthy, secure, connected, and creative humanity.

 

Study finds people of color more likely to participate in cancer clinical trials

Findings counter belief that minorities are less like to participate in health research

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA

Research New

   

People of color, those with a higher income and younger individuals are more likely to participate in clinical trials during their cancer treatment according to a new study from the University of Missouri School of Medicine.

Clinical trials are research studies that involve people who volunteer to take part in tests of new drugs, current approved drugs for a new purpose or medical devices.

The study analyzed data collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey, which is an annual national telephone survey designed to collect health-related data from U.S. adults. Survey years selected included the question, "Did you participate in a clinical trial as part of your cancer treatment?" The analysis of 20,053 respondents revealed an average overall clinical trial participation rate of 6.51%. Among 17,600 white respondents, participation was 6.24%; among 445 Hispanic respondents, participation was 11%; and among 943 Black respondents, participation was 8.27%.

"This study informs our understanding of who is participating in cancer clinical trials," said Lincoln Sheets, MD, PhD, assistant research professor at the MU School of Medicine. "We found people of color were more likely to participate in cancer clinical trials than white cancer patients when controlling for other demographic factors. It could be that in previous studies, the effects of income, sex or age were muddling the true picture."

Sheets said the analysis also indicated people who earn more than the national median household income of $50,000 annually and the young were more likely to participate in clinical trials during cancer treatment.

"Taken in total, the results of this study help confirm that there are sociodemographic disparities in cancer clinical trials, indicating there are deficiencies in the system as it stands now," Sheets said. "We must lessen financial barriers to participation, improve logistical accessibility of cancer clinical trials and loosen restrictions on the enrollment of patients with comorbidities."

Sheets said improving access to transportation, childcare and health insurance would remove some of the structural and logistical barriers that prevent people from participating in cancer clinical trials.

###

Sheets collaborated on the study with MU School of Medicine student Shelby Meyer.

Their study, "Sociodemographic diversity in cancer clinical trials: New findings on the effect of race and ethnicity," was published by the journal Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications. The authors of the study declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

 NEWS RELEASE 28-APR-2021

El Niño can help predict cacao harvests up to 2 years in advance

Long-term weather data is absent in many places, complicating rain predictions for crops. Researchers found that the El Niño climate cycle can be a reliable substitute for weather data

THE ALLIANCE OF BIOVERSITY INTERNATIONAL AND THE INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR TROPICAL AGRICULTURE

Research News

 

IMAGE: A WOMAN INSPECTS HARVESTED CACAO BEANS DRYING IN THE SUN IN SOPPENG, SOUTH SULAWESI, INDONESIA. view more 

CREDIT: COCOA CARE AND T. OBERTHU?R

When seasonal rains arrive late in Indonesia, farmers often take it as a sign that it is not worth investing in fertilizer for their crops. Sometimes they opt out of planting annual crops altogether. Generally, they're making the right decision, as a late start to the rainy season is usually associated with the state of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and low rainfall in the coming months.

New research published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports shows that ENSO, the weather-shaping cycle of warming and cooling of the Pacific Ocean along the Equator, is a strong predictor of cacao harvests up to two years before a harvest.

This is potentially very good news for smallholder farmers, scientists, and the global chocolate industry. The ability to predict harvest sizes well in advance could shape on-farm investment decisions, improve tropical crop research programs, and reduce risk and uncertainty in the chocolate industry.

Researchers say that the same methods - which pair advanced machine learning with rigorous, short-term data collection on farmer practices and yields - can apply to other rain-dependent crops including coffee and olives.

"The key innovation in this research is that you can effectively substitute weather data with ENSO data," said Thomas Oberthür, a co-author and business developer at the African Plant Nutrition Institute (APNI) in Morocco. "Any crop that shares a production relationship with ENSO can be explored using this method."

About 80 percent of global cropland depends on direct rainfall (as opposed to irrigation), accounting for almost 60 percent of production. But rainfall data is sparse and highly variable in many of these regions, making it difficult for scientists, policymakers and farmers groups to adapt to the vagaries of the weather.

No weather data? No problem

For the study, researchers used a type of machine learning that did not require weather records for the Indonesian cacao farms that participated in the research.

Rather, they relied on data on fertilizer application, yields and farm type, which they plugged into a Bayesian Neural Network (BNN) and found that ENSO phases predicted 75 % of the variation in yields.

In other words, the sea-surface temperature of the Pacific accurately predicted cacao harvests in a large majority of cases for the farms in the study. In some cases, accurate predictions were possible 25 months before the harvest.

For the uninitiated, a model that can accurately predict 50% of yield variation is usually cause to celebrate. And such long-range predictive accuracy for crop yields crops is rare.

"What this allows us to do is superimpose different management practices - such as fertilization regimes - on farms and deduce, with a high level of confidence, those interventions that work," said James Cock, a co-author and emeritus researcher at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT. "This is a whole paradigm shift toward operational research."

Cock, a plant physiologist, said that while randomized control trials (RCTs) are generally considered the gold standard in research, these are extremely costly and consequently often impossible to perform in developing tropical agricultural areas. The approach used here is much lower cost, requires no expensive collection of weather records and provides useful guidelines on how to better manage crops under variable weather.

Ross Chapman, a data analyst and the study's lead author, explained some of the key benefits of machine learning methods over conventional data analysis approaches:

"The BNN modeling differs from standard regression modeling because the algorithm takes input variables, such as sea-surface temperature and farm type, and then automatically 'learns' to recognize responses in other variables, such as crop yield," Chapman said. "The learning process uses the same fundamental process that the human mind learns to recognize objects and patterns from real-life experience. In contrast, standard models require manual supervision of different variables via human-generated equations."

The value of shared data

While machine learning may promise better crop yield predictions in the absence of weather data, scientists - or farmers themselves - still need to accurately collect certain production information and have that data readily available if machine-learning models are going to work.

In the case of the Indonesian cacao farms in the study, farmers had been part of a major chocolate company's training program on best practices. They kept track of inputs such as fertilizer application, freely shared that data for analysis, and an organization with a local presence, the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI), kept tidy records for researchers to use.

In addition, scientists had previously divided their farms into ten similar groups, where topography and soil conditions were similar. The researchers used data on harvests, fertilizer applications and yields from 2013 to 2018 to build their model.

The knowledge gained by cacao growers gives them confidence on how and when to invest in fertilizers. The agronomic skills this vulnerable group acquired shields them against a loss in their investment, which typically occurs when weather is adverse.

Thanks to their collaboration with the researchers, now their knowledge can be, in a way, shared with growers of other crops in other regions of the world.

"This research could not have happened without dedicated farmers, IPNI and a strong farmers' support organization, Community Solutions International, to pull everyone together," Cock said, emphasizing the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration and balancing stakeholder's different needs.

"What scientists want is to know why something happens," he said. "Farmers want to know what works."

APNI's Oberthür said strong predictive modeling could benefit both farmers and researchers, and fuel further collaboration.

"You need to have tangible results if you're a farmer who is also collecting data, which is a lot of work," Oberthür said. "This modeling, which can provide farmers with beneficial information, may help incentivize data collection since farmers will see that they are contributing to something that provides benefits to them on their farms."

###

About the Alliance

The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) delivers research-based solutions that harness agricultural biodiversity and sustainably transform food systems to improve people's lives. Alliance solutions address the global crises of malnutrition, climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation.

The Alliance is part of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future.

http://www.bioversityinternational.org http://www.ciat.cgiar.org http://www.cgiar.org

HEY KENNEY & MOE

Inactive oil wells could be big source of methane emissions

Geologist studies greenhouse gas emissions from uncapped, idle wells in Texas

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

Research News

IMAGE: UC UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANT JACOB HOSCHOUER TAKES SAMPLES FROM AN INACTIVE OIL WELL. view more 

CREDIT: UC GEOLOGY

Uncapped, idle oil wells could be leaking millions of kilograms of methane each year into the atmosphere and surface water, according to a study by the University of Cincinnati.

Amy Townsend-Small, an associate professor of geology and geography in UC's College of Arts and Sciences, studied 37 wells on private property in the Permian Basin of Texas, the largest oil production region on Earth. She found that seven had methane emissions of as much as 132 grams per hour. The average rate was 6.2 grams per hour.

"Some of them were leaking a lot. Most of them were leaking a little or not at all, which is a pattern that we have seen across the oil and gas supply chain," Townsend-Small said. "A few sources are responsible for most of the leaks."

The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, is the first of its kind on methane emissions from inactive oil wells in Texas.

"Nobody has ever gotten access to these wells in Texas," Townsend-Small said. "In my previous studies, the wells were all on public land."

A 2016 study by Townsend-Small found a similar issue in inactive wells she tested in Colorado, Wyoming, Ohio and Utah. Spread across the estimated 3.1 million abandoned wells, the leaking methane is equivalent to burning more than 16 million barrels of oil, according to government estimates.

Five of the inactive wells Townsend-Small studied in Texas were leaking a brine solution onto the ground, in some cases creating large ponds. 

"I was horrified by that. I've never seen anything like that here in Ohio," Townsend-Small said. "One was gushing out so much water that people who lived there called it a lake, but it's toxic. It has dead trees all around it and smells like hydrogen sulfide."

Most of the wells had been inactive for three to five years, possibly because of fluctuations in market demand. Inactive wells could be a substantial source of methane emissions if they are not subject to leak detection and repair regulations, the UC study concluded.

The study was funded in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Previous studies have found the basin generates 2.7 billion kilograms of methane per year or nearly 4% of the total gas extracted. That's 60% higher than the average methane emissions in oil and gas production regions nationally. This was attributed to high rates of venting and flaring due to a lack of natural gas pipelines and other gas production infrastructure.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that scientists have linked to climate change. If the rate of methane leaks UC observed were consistent across all 102,000 idled wells in Texas, the 5.5 million kilograms of methane released would be equivalent to burning 150 million pounds of coal each year, according to an estimate by the magazine Grist and nonprofit news organization the Texas Observer.

Townsend-Small and her UC undergraduate research assistant Jacob Hoschouer, a study co-author, came to Texas at the suggestion of the media organizations, which wanted to explore the environmental impact of oil wells, particularly those that are inactive or abandoned. An expert on methane emissions, Townsend-Small has studied releases from oil and natural gas wells across the country.

The journalists arranged with the property owners for Townsend-Small to examine the wells. 

President Joe Biden's administration has pledged $16 billion in its infrastructure plan to cap abandoned oil and gas wells and mitigate abandoned mines. Hoschouer said it would be gratifying if their research could help regulators prioritize wells for capping.

In the meantime, regular inspections of inactive wells using infrared cameras to identify leaks could address the problem, the UC study suggested.

CAPTION

UC associate professor Amy Townsend-Small stands in front of ponding water from an inactive oil well.

CREDIT

UC Geology